Shaughnessy’s Continued Digs at Robert Kraft…And Fondness For Tomato Cans

In typical lucky fashion, the tomato cans* are lining up for the Patriots, which is great news for Robert (“you can call me Amos Alonzo or you can call me Hef, but please don’t call me Bob”) Kraft and the CBS executives who worship the Patriots.

*see below

From today:

According to the Patriots Pro Shop website, you can still order a Myra H. Kraft lapel pin or patch for $5.

Is Shaughnessy accusing the Patriots/Krafts of making money off the MHK pins? The Patriots Pro Shop website states:

Show your support with the Myra H. Kraft Lapel Pin. All proceeds go to the Myra Kraft Giving Back Scholarship Fund at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston.

Or is Shaughnessy expressing disapproval for Kraft’s current relationship? (The “Hef” reference above would seem to indicate that.) Whichever it is, the point remains that the MHK pins and patches are only there to raise money for charity.

Shaughnessy’s digs are predictable…and despicable. That breakfast snub 15 years ago or so really burns him up so much to this day?

Back to the asterisk above, Shaughnessy seems to have a fondness for that phrase, and mostly when it comes to the Patriots schedule, Celtics too on occasion.

From just this year:

January 14, 2012

Their 2011 regular-season schedule featured more tomato cans than an Andy Warhol gallery, and they’re coming off a bye week in which several of their wounded warriors got healthy.

February 7th, 2012

Ultimately, they were fortunate sons enlarged by a tomato can schedule and masterful coaching.

May 9th, 2012

Like the 2011 Patriots, the Celtics are beneficiaries of some nice breaks at the start of the playoffs. The Patriots drew a horrible Denver team for the first round. The Celtics got the Atlanta Tomato Cans.

May 19th 2012

The tomato cans were falling down in front of the Celtics.

May 28th 2012

The Tomato Cans from Atlanta and Philadelphia have been beaten.

September 10th, 2012

Tennessee was 9-7 last year, but on Sunday looked like just another tomato can lined up in front of Bill Belichick’s steamroller army.

November 6th, 2012

The AFC is weak, and once again the tomato cans are falling down in front of the Patriots.

December 2nd, 2012

In typical lucky fashion, the tomato cans are lining up for the Patriots, which is great news for Robert (“you can call me Amos Alonzo or you can call me Hef, but please don’t call me Bob”) Kraft and the CBS executives who worship the Patriots.

December 3rd, 2012

The Dolphins are like fellow division tomato cans, the Bills and the Jets.

Might be time for a new catchphrase, Dan. I know you’re thinking it is a clever way to discredit whatever accomplishments the Patriots might achieve, but it is incredibly lame.

Especially when there is a specific formula for coming up with the schedule. The Patriots will have played the Ravens, Broncos, Seahawks, Colts, Texans and 49ers – all who could be playoff teams. The Ravens, Broncos and Texans are the top teams in the AFC, with the Patriots.

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Great work, Bruce…..lazy hacks like Shank must long for the “old days” when it was tougher to keep track of them…nice job

hambone

what a disgrace of a human being shaughnessy is…thumbs up bruce! love your posts recently. add borges to the list of disgrace too.

Bullock

We should start referring to Shank’s mailed-in columns as tomato cans, yes? Those “Picked-up Pieces” columns? They should be called “Collecting the Cans.”

Also, taking a subversive shot (oh, but I’m sure if you call him on it, he’ll deny it like the spineless turd he is) at a charity that supports the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston is pretty low, even for Shank.

Bullock

“Can” Shaughnessy has a nice ring to it.

Smyler3

TomatoFace. TomatoHead?

http://www.bostonsportsmediawatch.com/ bsmfan

I guess someone won’t be getting a Christmas card from Gillette. What’s next? Boston’s own “First Take” where CHB and Borges debate each other for 2 hours from 10am-12 on NESN?

I really hope that a ‘fan’ consuming his piece realizes how damn lucky we are. See what is going on in Philadelphia where they will most likely fire Reid and make BB the longest tenured coach? When we don’t win an AFC title for 5 years in a row, what then?
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The only people who can whine about scheduling are: 1.) Media and fans debating weekly power rankings in a league. 2.) Folks who are not happy with the BCS in CFB and most media members up here are willfully ignorant of CFB until they try to sell us that they watch. As you stated, NFL teams, like all pro-teams, don’t have the luxury to schedule Savannah State and drop 70 on them before halftime so they can rest their starters: (http://yhoo.it/TK7F0u)
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Still hear the “Lloyd is a disappointment” sentiment from certain folks. Bedard clears up his role at least in one game:

The Patriots never sold us on “Lloyd is mini-Moss”, the media did. So, maybe to them he’s a disappointment, but he’s working out well for the plans the team had (which matters) for him?

He’s definitely not the old 85 that we knew could not line up properly.

Ted Sarandis

Great great post Bruce.

Frank

Seriously, is there a better owner in New England than Bob Kraft? Local guy, becomes a prominent business owner and philanthropist. Buys the local football team and saves them from being relocated to another part of the country. Through shrewd highers and decisions he turns the forever laughable Patsies into one of the most successful and valuable teams in all of professional sports. Oh and by the way he was instrumental in stopping not one but two labor disputes in the NFL. This guy’s been in the zone for like 5 decades, but somehow all these accomplishments are not good enough for Danny boy. What a bunch of crap.

And the fact that Shank somehow still weasels his way into virtually every Boston sports documentary drives me crazy. This hack from way back does not speak for me or my generation, and the fact that he is supposed to be a representative of the city is a sin.

john

Shaughnessy is the Howie Carr of the Boston sports news scene. He whines and whines and throws weekly tantrums with juvenile name calling. I don’t understand why anyone would read either, no new information is garnered from reading them, and their is not even an interesting perspective, just the same one they have been peddling for decades, with the same worn out name calling and catchphrases. I think I could write a program to make either of their columns automatically.

dan

You guys shouldn’t get so worked up about CHB. You are giving him what he wants. In my case I’ve never taken him seriously an brush everything he says because to be frank it’s hard to take him seriously with the red pubes on top of his head.
The man has a hairstyle that closely resembles a pubic patch. Nuff said.

http://twitter.com/DryHeave1 DryHeave

I think it just a case of calling him out. …If I thought for a minute that ignoring Shank would drive him into retirement I’d be all for it. But let’s face it. Ignore him or don’t ignore him Shank isn’t going anywhere. He has a lifetime job at the Globe. So I think it’s good people like Bruce are around to brink attention to his laziness and overall hackness.

Classless

I hope Shank checks back in when his wife dies to tell us all how to live our lives as a widow. That’s the worst part of any of what he wrote.

What bothers me the most about Shank’s constant pounding of Kraft is the level of immaturity it takes for a grown man who’s got to be in his late 50s to carry on a “grudge” for as long as he’s carried his grudge against Kraft. I’ve gone on record here before stating that it was foolish for Kraft to have snubbed Shaughnessy at that Super Bowl event 15 or so years ago–foolish only because Kraft should have known that these self-important, egomaniac journalists NEVER forget it when one of their “subjects” does’t treat them with total deference (see Borges vs. Bill Belichick, or just about ANYONE in the media vs. Bill Belichick for that matter).
He (Kraft) should have known that he was making an enemy for life when he snubbed Shank. It was foolish for him to do what he did. Of course, Shank deserved it, since he blamed Kraft exclusively for the breakup of the Patriots/Parcells marriage and never once gave Kraft’s side of the story any fair shot in his articles (we now know, years later, that the Tuna was hardly blameless in that episode).

All that said, we’re talking about a man in his late 50s still carrying a nasty grudge over something extremely minor in nature that occurred a decade and a half ago. What an immature DB he is.